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Program Curriculum

Mission

Our mission is to produce physicians and scientists who are prepared to enter society as informed advocates and activists who are able to advance clinical care and science and promote change.

Guiding Principles

Guiding principles offer us an opportunity to reflect upon our own values and beliefs about learning, allow us to critically evaluate what we are doing and provide a framework for our educational activities. The 11 guiding principles for the MD Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are:

Provide early and longitudinal patient care experiences, with progressive clinical responsibilities throughout the continuum of care and across the spectrum of disease.

Provide a curriculum that is responsive to the educational needs of students, supports different learning styles, is interactive, evolving, and promotes professional and personal growth.

Emphasize the integration of biological and social determinants of health, disease, and treatment throughout the curriculum through approaches that incorporate cutting-edge scientific advances and evidence-based reasoning.

Offer frequent formative feedback to guide learning and milestone-based assessments to prepare students for the supervised practice of medicine.

Incorporate a network of mentorship throughout the learning environment.

Promote respectful collaboration in working toward common goals.

Instill commitment to the dignity of patients, health advocacy, and social responsibility.

Promote and develop leadership skills that enable students to use the profession to effect change.

Facilitate development of the student as a life-long learner.

Foster the appropriate use of technology to improve patient care and facilitate knowledge acquisition.

Through a mentored scholarly project, develop intellectual curiosity and an understanding of how research informs health and healthcare.

Competencies

The competencies represent the core knowledge, skills, and attitudes expected of our graduates to ensure their success in the future.

Adhere to institutional and professional standards of medical practice.

Recognize and report actual and potential medical errors.

Demonstrate a commitment to quality improvement and patient safety.

Honesty and Integrity

Be honest and ethical in clinical interactions, educational activities, scholarly work and service activities.

Accurately represent one’s role and capabilities.

Recognize potential conflicts of interest.

Empathy

Demonstrate compassion for the experiences and conditions of patients.

Respond to the emotional needs of patients and their caregivers.

Respect

Acknowledge and protect the dignity of patients.

Act in a non-judgmental manner toward patients and caregivers.

Ensure the privacy of health information.

Conduct oneself in a manner appropriate to the setting and activity.

Evaluation

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai supports an atmosphere of reflective practice and a culture of quality and self-improvement to promote our rigorous standards of excellence. We use a broad range of learner assessment tools to provide meaningful formative and summative information, as well as to provide evidence that students have met program competencies. Written and computer-based examinations, oral examinations, demonstration of skills, self and peer assessments, standardized patient feedback, and faculty evaluations are included so that decisions about competence can be made in an evidence-based manner. The administrative and advising teams within Student Affairs provide support for an early warning approach to students who are having difficulties. These teams assure appropriate responses to assessment data and can offer resources such as tutoring, faculty guidance, or remedial programs when necessary.